


unbecoming

by metalmouth



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, During Canon, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s02e22 Becoming Part 2, Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Torture, Self-Denial, might be out of character but the trauma is my excuse :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22062085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalmouth/pseuds/metalmouth
Summary: He dreams of peculiar things. Smells like the non-smell that computers possess (which is strange by itself, Giles thinks, computers have no smells!) and somebody's lovely perfume, somebody he feels like he should remember but doesn't recall. Smiling brown eyes, teasing remarks and lingering touches that litter his arms and his lower back. Something blossoms in his chest and he feels a smile on his face and sees a smile on somebody else's until it all drops.
Kudos: 5





	unbecoming

Giles doesn't know why he can't look at Angel. He doesn't know why he seems panicked at the thought of being touched by him, to let alone being in a _room_ together. The first time he's seen him since the whole "Opening Hell" thing, his heart pounded in his chest and his hands won't stop shaking. He doesn't know why. He doesn't understand the way his Scooby Gang treats him as if he was fine china and he definitely doesn't understand the confused looks and the concerned glances. 

It's like somebody deleted footage of his brain's surveillance system. Giles doesn't know where time seemed to be lost nor does he know where it starts to fade back again. He only remembers somebody wanting to open the gateway to hell, some old as… well, hell demon popping out from nowhere and then… nothing. Maybe it's a spell Willow tried gone wrong or he hit his head too hard falling after an attack. Yes… he remembers the vampires’ ambush and the unfortunate death of that Slayer if he could only remember her name. But that's all. Everything his mind can dig up. 

Seemingly. 

When Giles gets home after a day of pretending students care about going into libraries and checking out books that aren't witchcraft, the dark arts or Demon Summoning 101, and he lies on his bed that seems larger than life and colder than the North Pole, he thinks. Not on purpose, just a byproduct of trying to get decent rest and to forget how life on a Hellmouth is terrible, his mind just drifts. 

He dreams of peculiar things. Smells like the non-smell that computers possess (which is strange by itself, Giles thinks, computers _have_ no smells!) and _somebody_ 's lovely perfume, somebody he feels like he should remember but doesn't recall. Smiling brown eyes, teasing remarks and lingering touches that litter his arms and his lower back. Something blossoms in his chest and he feels a smile on his face and _sees_ a smile on somebody else's until it all drops. The perfume no longer smells rich and wonderful but reminds Giles of damp basements and sweat and the touches that kiss his arms and back are replaced by big hands painting a swirling watercolor of blue, purple, green on his body. The blossom in his chest drops to his feet as his throat hurts, raw from screaming and yelling and he feels harsh words fall from his lips and harsh slaps and kicks on his body but from what? 

Who's screaming?

His throat hurts when he wakes up. Sometimes he wakes up, not greeted by the yellow sunshine streaming through his window, but the pale blue moonlight replacing and making shadows on his floors and walls. For an unspeakable reason, he's shaking. His body is slick with sweat and his hands won't stop shaking and his throat is raw and he desperately wants a cup of tea. But he dares not move, for unfathomable reasons, from his bed which seems like a prison to him, something chaining him down to the mattress disguised in warm thick duvets, and he waits until morning. And his dream is gone and the grip on his heart loosens and he can breathe again. He's breathing again. 

He walks down the stairs, drifting through his own home like a ghost, and he turns the kettle on and ignores how much the screeching sounds like the ones that echoed in his ears all night and he drinks his tea, gripping so tightly, afraid it might fall through his grasps for it feels like everything slips through his fingers (Giles has no reason to believe this but he can't ignore the gnawing feeling in his bones, he cannot let his cup leave his grasp.) 

His dreams are so peculiar, it must be a curse of some sort. A spell, a symptom of living atop a Hellmouth, so he does what he does best. He grabs thick volumes off the shelves of the library and lock himself in his office and spends hours going through and reading each word. Giles would find a promising cause but when looking closer, it seems like nothing's come of it. A reason, an explanation to his dreams, his loss of time, the reason why he dreams of soft lips and golden perfume. Something that'll explain everything, a monster he can send Buffy to clean up and all will be well; he'll return to having no recollection of his dreams, his apprehension with Angel will disappear and he won't feel the ghost of something rubbing his wrists raw, his lips feeling cold and tingly, his ribs aching and having breath in his lungs again. Giles can finally feel whole again. 

That's to assume Giles _isn’t_ feeling whole, which he is, in fact, feeling very much whole and fine and he doesn't need to be handled so delicately. What's even more strange is the feeling he gets when Buffy finally tells them that she's being nursing Angel back to health. 

She tells them (and this is a story for the ages!) that Angel was sent back from Hell and needed to be helped, healed (Healed left an awful taste in his mouth and he fights back the urge to vomit.) Willow sits them all down and the whole thing reeked of Anonymous Alcoholics meetings, using 'I' statements. Giles finds it amusing as if she relapsed on cocaine or some other drug teenagers are into. What wasn't so funny, he supposes, is when the gang left after Xander and Buffy got into a screaming match is how he cries in the backroom. He doesn't know why he's crying nor can he explain the suffocating feeling in his chest like somebody sat on him and wouldn't get up and it billows in his chest and to other limbs before it consumes him fully. 

(He'll have to research it, just another curse, a spell, a potion he must've accidentally drunk, something by the infamous Ethan Rayne to get back at him.) 

  
  


Giles continues to dream about soft hands and brown hair shaped into a bob. He begins to welcome them, rather than sending them away and maybe.. just maybe he doesn't mind this curse after all. If every dream was of laughter and silly colored scarves, he could stand to stomach it. Although when the air grows stale and his joints scream out in protest, as fingers turn into fists in his hair and his head pushed back so harshly that even Giles feels the neck pain now, he feels fear in his chest, sinking through the layers of skin, tissue and muscle, settling in the marrow of his bones. Melodic voices turn rough and deep as they whisper something constantly in his head, invading his mind Giles finds it _so funny_ how he can't remember them now. He feels leather brush against his skin and the deep voice rumbles in his mind and who has that same deep voice with an inclination to leather? His eyes are unfocused, he can't remember who's standing in front of him now, holding his head up and making his skin turn a " _lovely shade of purple, Drusilla, honey, come look!"_ and he can't remember whose hands are running over his face, confusing him more, tugging on his lips with their teeth and looking at him with such hunger in their eyes, he shakes even now and _please_ somebody tell him who's kissing him and to get them off for the love of God and to please tell Jenny he's sorry, _oh god Jenny i'm so sorry, i should've been there to protect you please forgive me jenny please im so sorry imsosorryimsosor ry_

  
  


And as soon as Giles wakes up, the remnants of stolen kisses and bruised skin and _Jenny_ releases the claws on the mind and slips away under his pillow and makes their home beneath the bed. Giles can't begin to think why he's crying and he thinks he won't find a reason for much of what he's been doing. Unless he needs more research done of this _curse_ , what a dreadful thing, he has been getting nowhere. Of course, he could search computers but they're boxes of nonsense with no good smell to them and he'll sooner die than to have to touch and work one of them himself and that's final! 

What a curse, Giles thinks as he holds so tightly to his mug, what a powerful spell indeed, to make his dreams of such peculiar things, odd ideas and to make his body betray his every wish. Ah, he continues to think as he sips at his mug, to make his hands tremble and his eyes so hyper-aware of movement, he's never learned of such of thing. Oh yes, Giles giggles to himself as he stares down into the dark brown liquid, Ethan Rayne has outdone himself this time.

**Author's Note:**

> fuck it *writes and publishes my first and probably last btvs fic before the decade ends*


End file.
